Pages

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Insider | Tim Moore

Anything to declare?

Executive summary by darmansjah

The travel writer reveals the only thing worse than a bat in
a hotel room – a ‘Teesside parmo’

What is your
favourite travel book?

As an account of a mid-Victorian Arctic journey penned by
the future viceroy and governor-general of India, Lord Dufferin’s Letters From High Latitudes, written in
1856, should have been a study in plodding pomposity. Yet just a few pages in –
with contest, in Latin – I found my self embroiled in a quite brilliant comic
travelogue. The day I finished it, I chucked in my job and went off to follow
in his footsteps.

What has been your
scariest moment when travelling?

I nurture a phobia of large insects. I visited a
hypnotherapist, hoping to be cured, then went off to the Costa Rican rainforest
to see if it had worked. Just before the final leg of my outward journey, I
stayed at a hotel in San Jose. A huge bat somehow got into my room and sent
berserk in a way that I thought bats weren’tsupposed to, hurling itself at the curtains and furnishings. I made a
dash for the bathroom and spent the rest of the night in there. Just before
dawn, I spotted a tiny spider in the bidet and burst into tears.

Where in the world
did you eat your most memorable meal?

A restorative Mars bar, forced into my mouth at what I
though was the summit of Kilimanjaro by sympathetic climbing companions who
knew that it wasn’t Kilimanjaro at all. Most recently, the cheese-fried poultry
apocalypse that is a ‘parmo’ – Teeside’s outrage against nutritional decency.

Which destination has
surprised you the most?

Dubai. I thought I’d be enthralled by the scale of it all,
but when I looked at the yawning forest of cranes and half-built blocks, it just
the felt sickening wrong. There were armies of immigrant construction workers
kept like slaves in portable compounds, and the traffic was so crazy, I once
had to get a cab just to cross the road. It was as if Dubai’s elders had sat
down and considered every civic mistake that mankind has ever made, then
decided to make them all in one place.

Window seat or aisle
seat?

The first time I heard myself ask for an aisle seat I
thought: ‘Oh, I’m a grown-up’. That giddy young thrill of gazing down in awe at
the magical, miniature-scale world beneath supplanted by a humdrum
preoccupation with toilet logistics. Mind you, that was only about five years
ago, and I’m now 47.

Where do you always
return to?

Iceland, land of fire, ice and my in-laws. Christmas there
is always a winner – snow, relentless festivity and none of the cynicism that
is becoming the seasonal mood in Britain.

What’s your biggest
travelling annoyance?

It’s hard to see beyond airport security, with allthose queues and the degradation of removing your
shoes. Air travel used to be glamorous. Now it feels like visiting someone in
prison.

What’s the best thing
you’ve found on your travels?

A Native American obsidian arrowhead in a Kentucky forest
and a 50,000-lire mote floating down the Grand Canal in Venice.

Do you send postcards?

I haven’t for a long time – though I suppose they’re how I
started travel writing. I went inter Railing after my A-levels and sent my
parents incredibly detailed postcard updates in tiny handwriting. Everytime, I
wedged in a desperate-sounding ‘PS’ in the top-right-hand corner, with the
stamp positioned to obscure all salient details: ‘Just been arrested
for…without water or…weeping sore and a huge..please urgently..’

Which passport stamp are you most proud of?

Kazakhtstan - full-page visa in the national colours. Nothing to match my granfather's passport, though. He was a foreign correspondent for The Daily Telegraph from the Twenties to the Fifties, and every page is a multilingual, around-the-world adventure fro mthe golden age of jounalism.

What do you always take with you?

My granfather's portable typewritter and 100 sheets of airmail Foolscap paper is what I want to say, but in truth it's earplugs and Tabasco sauce, which blot out the worst sensory horrors that the world might throw at you. Parmos excepted.